Various apparatus for splitting fire wood are known in the art. However, there are few machines which are capable of cutting large diameter logs into fire wood.
Typical wood splitters have a wedge-shape cutting member or a cross-shape cutting member which is forcibly rammed into the wood. Often, however, the wedge-shaped or cross-shaped cutting members become stuck in the piece of wood, especially if the wood is very hard or thick or if insufficient force is used to ram the wedge into the wood. If the blade or wedge jams in the wood, it is a common practice to use a sledge hammer or other heavy object to dislodge the wood from the blade.
Another disadvantage of prior wood cutting apparatus is that the wood cutting apparatus remains stationary while individual pieces of wood to be cut are placed within the path of the traveling ram or wedge. This also involves much labor intensive hauling and positioning of the pieces of wood to be cut within the path of the wood splitting apparatus.
While present day commercial fire wood processors have solved some of these problems, there are limitations to these machines. Most fire wood processors require the wood to be a long straight form. The logs must be fairly straight and usually have a minimum and maximum diameter restriction. The maximum diameter is usually not very large; that is, less than about 30 inches. These processors usually have an apparatus to cut the log to fire wood length. Then, the cut log is forced through a multiple wedge cutting system. This splitting usually leads to many pieces of wood being too small or too large and also leaves a lot of useless debris.
There is a need to have an apparatus to quickly and efficiently split wood into fire wood size pieces that is not greatly limited by length, shape or size.
There is also a need for an apparatus to easily and quickly control the size of the fire wood pieces, greatly eliminating odd sizes and trash.